Les Arts Florissants Coming to Lincoln Center, BAM & More During 2015-16 Season

Details of the 38th season of Les Arts Florissants, the internationally renowned Baroque music ensemble founded by William Christie, have just been announced and include more than 100 performances of chamber and sacred music, opera, oratorio, dance, and semi-staged presentations at some 20 cities across France, and concerts in 10 countries in Europe and North America, as well as Les Arts Florissants' first season as a resident ensemble of the new Philharmonie de Paris.

Theodora, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Alice Tully Hall, October 31

Conductor, harpsichordist, and musicologist William Christie will lead the Choir and Orchestra of Les Arts Florissants at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in a new concert version of Theodora, Handel's dramatic oratorio, and the next to last one he wrote. Composed in 1749, the work is based on the 17th-century novel The Martyrdom of Theodora and Didymus, and tells the story of two Christian martyrs in 3rd-century Antioch under the reign of Emperor Diocletian's persecution of Christians. The main characters are the grief-stricken Christian woman Theodora (sung by English soprano Katherine Watson), and her lover, the soldier Didymus (French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky), who is secretly also a Christian. Both are put to death by the Roman governor Valens. With a poignant score dominated by music in a minor key, Theodora made no concessions to popular tastes of the time and in response to the public's cool initial reception, Handel allegedly wrote, "It doesn't matter; the music will only sound better for it." Christie first led Theodora in now-legendary 1996 performances of Peter Sellars' controversial staging of the oratorio at the Glyndebourne Festival, and has since conducted acclaimed presentations of the work with Les Arts Florissants and released a highly praised recording on the Erato label.

The performance of Theodora is part of Lincoln Center's Great Performers series and White Light Festival and will be preceded by dates at Paris' Théâtre des Champs Elysées (staged version) on October 10, 13, 16, 18, and 20 and an engagement at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw on November 7 (concert version).

To mark the occasion of this new production of Theodora, Erato/Warner Classics has re-issued a 3 CD edition of its original 2003 release.

Les Fêtes vénitiennes, Brooklyn Academy of Music, April 2016 (U.S. Premiere), April 14, 16 and 17, 2016

Following the world premiere of director Robert Carsen's production of André Campra's tremendously entertaining opera-ballet Les Fêtes vénitiennes at Paris' Opéra Comique, William Christie will take the podium at BAM to conduct the work with the Orchestra and Choir of Les Arts Florissants. First premiered at the Académie royale de Musique in 1710 to great success, Les Fêtes vénitiennes is a combination of small dramas, song, dance, and witty intrigue that supports a commedia dell'arte ambiance and the atmosphere of the Venice Carnival. Campra was one of the 18th century's most brilliant innovators and can be credited with the genesis of the opera-ballet genre. He demonstrated a biting observation of social mores through his works, and together with Les Fêtes librettist Antoine Danchet, an incisive criticism of Parisian theater.

The BAM run will be preceded by performances at Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse, France on February 23 - 28, 2016. Les Fêtes vénitiennes is a production of Opéra Comique, co-produced with Les Arts Florissants.

Serious Airs and Drinking Songs (Airs sérieux et à boire) II

Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill, NC April 20, 2016

New Hall, Kansas City, MO April 23, 2016

Serious Airs and Drinking Songs will find William Christie at the harpsichord-and occasionally joining in the action-with five up-and-coming vocalists singing songs of love, loss, and licentiousness. The simple music dates back to the 17th century and belongs to a genre known as air de cour. Rooted in popular culture, the air de cour was adored by high society and applied to all kinds of poetry, from drinking and dancing songs to spiritual airs. Michel Lambert-Lully's father-in-law-was one of the form's most celebrated champions, and much of his work will be heard in this program, which follows a loosely constructed narrative with minimal staging. The First Chapter of Serious Airs and Drinking Songs was presented last season-touring in Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco-and told the story of a marriage. This season's Chapter Two portrays an acting troupe at work with a "love conquers all" theme. The music will include excerpts from Charpentier's Pastoraletta, as well as airs by Lambert, Moulinié, Charpentier and Le Camus exposing the petty intrigues of the troupe members. Serious Airs and Drinking Songs will also be presented at the Théâtre de Caen (April 2), London's Wigmore Hall (April 4), and the Paris Philharmonie (April 6).

Additional Season Highlights

The second installment of In an Italian Garden (Un jardin à l'Italienne), a concert performed by the young singers of Les Arts Florissants' academy for young singers Le Jardin des Voix, will take place on September 5 at the Lucerne Festival, led by William Christie. Founded by Christie in 2002, the Academy trains top vocalists chosen from more than 20 countries and presents them in a variety of formats designed to showcase their talents at major concert halls around the world. The program will offer madrigals and ardent Italian arias by such composers as Stradella, Vivaldi, Cimorosa and Piccini. In an Italian Garden continues in January 2016 with performances in Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Warsaw, and Besançon, and Les Arts Florissants co-director Paul Agnew will then lead the singers and the Orchestra of Les Arts Florissants. The concerts are semi-staged by Sophie Daneman and Paul Agnew.

Following the release of the CD Cremona in May 2015, Les Arts Florissants travels to the Ambronay Festival on October 2 with Cremona, a concert of works by one of music's great masters, Monteverdi. The composer was born in the small Lombardy town of Cremona, where he wrote his first three books of Madrigals. Les Arts Florissants has been performing the composer's repertoire as part of its complete cycle of Monteverdi madrigals since 2011 and in this program, tenor and Les Arts Florissants' co-director Paul Agnew will lead the Ensemble in excerpts from Madrigal Books I, II, and III. Cremona will also be heard at the Spitalfield Music and Actus Humanus Festivals in December and in Zamora and Madrid in March 2016.

Beginning on December 17 in Caen, Christie andthe musicians of Les Arts Florissants will present Molière's and Lully's delightful play Monsieur de Pourceaugnac. A comedy about a somewhat clueless country gentleman arrived in Paris to marry a young woman promised to him-and who, of course, loves someone else-the play is interrupted by musical interludes. Monsieur de Pourceaugnac was premiered in 1669 in the court of Louis XIV with Lully himself appearing onstage in the role of a doctor. This new staging by Clément Hervie-Léger transposes the plot in the 1950s. In 2016, the production will move on to January engagements at Versailles, Aix-en-Provence, Bilbao, Madrid, and Châteauvallon; continue under conductors Paolo Zanzu and Jonathan Cohen at Béziers, Suresnes, Geneva, and Compiègne in February; at Val de Reuil, Chartres, Meaux, Chelles, and Amiens in March; Luxembourg in May; culminating at Paris' Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in June and July.

At the Paris Philharmonie

Les Arts Florissants comes to the new Paris Philharmonie in December as part of its first year as an official resident ensemble. In honor of the 300th anniversary of the death of the Sun King, Louis XIV-a true lover of the arts-Christie and his Ensemble have created Music at Versailles, a Day with the Sun King (Musique à Versailles, une journée avec le Roi-Soleil), an imaginary walk through the Palace of Versailles (December 4). A theatrical concert of music and dance, the event offers a full orchestra, choir and soloists as well as a master of ceremonies in the guise of Louis XIV himself to accompany the audience throughout the evening. The celebration continues at the Philharmonie over the weekend (December 5 - 6) with Louis XIV and his Music, featuring a music lesson by William Christie, and Baroque Dance with the King, a family workshop. Music at Versailles will also be presented in Brussels on November 23.

The musicians of Les Arts Florissants return to the Paris Philharmonie in March under the baton of Paul Agnew with Women in Love, a concert exploring the emotional landscape of women in love, from desolation to euphoria, as seen through the eyes of Monteverdi and his contemporaries (March 11). The program will include works by Gesualdo, Pallavicin, Carissimi, and DeWert as well as Monteverdi's Lamento from the opera Arianna, the only surviving fragment of the composer's lost opera.

On March 18, Christie will lead the orchestra in Mozart's two-act opera seria Il re pastore (The Shepard King). First performed in 1775 at the Salzburg Palace of the Archbishop Count Hieronymus von Colloredo when Mozart was around 19 years old, the opera was commissioned for a visit by the Archduke Maximilian Francis of Austria, the youngest son of Empress Maria Theresa, to Salzburg. Les Arts Florissants' production, featuring Rolando Villazón as Alessandro and Martina Janková as Aminta, will also be performed in Vienna (March 11), Barcelona (March 13), and Lucerne (March 15).

At the end of the month on March 26, Philharmonie audiences will be treated to a performance by the Choir and Orchestra of Les Arts Florissants of Bach's Mass in B minor, one of the composer's last and greatest masterworks. The program will next travel to Versailles (March 17), Barcelona (June 16), and Leipzig (June 19).

William Christie returns for another performance of Serious Airs and Drinking Songs on April 6 (see above) and on May 19, Paul Agnew mounts the podium with the Choir and Musicians of Les Arts Florissant for Masters of the French Motet, a program that underscores the Ensemble's mission to bring gems of the French Baroque repertoire to the public. The evening of sacred music will survey the works of Sebastien de Brossard and Pierre Bouteiller, and will also be heard at the Théâtre de Caen on May 18.

The fifth Festival Dans Les Jardins de William Christie will round out Les Arts Florissants' season from August 20 - 27, 2016 with a set of musical encounters combining the Ensemble, Christie's students from The Juilliard School in New York, Arts Flo Juniors and former laureates of Le Jardin des Voix in a week full of concerts and promenades amidst the lush greenery of Christie's private gardens, located in the village of Thiré in the Vendée region of France. The peaceful garden landscape offers different styles, including a formal Baroque courtyard and a whimsical topiary theater designed as a living stage for performances.

For additional information, visit www.arts-florissants.com and www.artsflomedia.com.

About Les Arts Florissants

The vocal and instrumental ensemble Les Arts Florissants is one of the most renowned and respected early music groups in Europe and around the world. Dedicated to the performance of Baroque music on period instruments, the Ensemble was founded in 1979 by Franco-American harpsichordist and conductor William Christie, and takes its name from a short opera by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Les Arts Florissants has been largely responsible for the resurgence of interest in 17th-century French repertoire as well as in European music of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Since receiving the Grand Prix de la Critique for its acclaimed 1987 production of Lully's Atys at the Opéra Comique in Paris, Les Arts Florissants has found great success in the field of opera. Notable productions include works by Rameau (Les Indes galantes, Hippolyte et Aricie, Les Boréades, and Les Paladins), Charpentier (Médée), Handel (Orlando, Acis and Galatea, Semele, Alcinain, Serse, and Hercules), and Purcell (King Arthur, Dido and Aeneas), as well as Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Opéra du Rhin and Monteverdi's much praised The Return of Ulysses at Aix-en-Provence. Les Arts Florissants has collaborated with such prominent stage directors as Jean-Marie Villégier and Deborah Warner and the choreographers Trisha Brown and Francine Lancelot. The Ensemble's extensive award-winning discography includes Purcell's King Arthur which received the Gramophone Award, Early Opera category, and Rameau's grand motets, which received another Gramophone Award in the Baroque Vocal category.

About William Christie

Harpsichordist, conductor, musicologist, and teacher William Christie is founder of the early music ensemble Les Arts Florissants. His pioneering work to bring new interpretations of neglected repertoire to both the opera house and the concert hall has led to a renewed appreciation of Baroque music for an increasingly wide range of new audiences. Born in Buffalo, NY, Christie has lived since 1971 in France, where he was professor of early music at the Paris Conservatory for more than ten years. His enthusiasm for French Baroque repertoire ranges from Charpentier to Rameau to Montéclair with an expertise in tradédie-lyrique as well as opera-ballet, and he is equally at home with court music and the French motet. Christie is also an avid explorer of other European repertoire, and has given numerous highly praised performances of works by such Italian composers as Monteverdi, Rossi, and Scarlatti in addition to Purcell, Handel, and Haydn. In demand as an opera conductor, he regularly appears at such prestigious venues as the Zurich Opernhaus, The Metropolitan Opera, and most recently at the Glyndebourne Festival for a production of Hippolyte et Aricle.

Christie's commitment to artist training is clearly demonstrated by Les Jardin des Voix, the young singers' academy he created in 2002; and by his 2012 founding of Dans les Jardin de William Christie, a series that brings together Les Arts Florissants, students from Juilliard, and alumni of Le Jardin des Voix for concerts in the gardens he created in Thiré. He is frequently invited to lead master classes at festivals throughout Europe and since 2007, he has been artist-in-residence at The Juilliard School. William Christie is the recipient of a Prix Georges Pompidou and the Choral Awards Liliane Bettencourt awarded by the Academy of Fine Arts.

About Paul Agnew

At the forefront of French Baroque repertoire, Glasgow-born teacher and counter tenor Paul Agnew is Co-Director of Les Jardins des Voix and was recently named Associate Musical Director of Les Arts Florissants. He made his critically-acclaimed debut singing the title role in Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie under the baton of William Christie in 2007, followed by major roles in Charpentier's Médée, Handel's Acis and Galatea, and Purcell's King Arthur. He continues to sing demanding roles worldwide at such venues as Opernhaus Zürich and the Paris Opera in addition to appearances with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Following Agnew's first program leading Les Arts Florissants in Vivaldi's Vespers in 2007, his conducting engagements with the LAF continued to grow, leading the Ensemble inHandel's Odes and Anthems, and Lamentazione, a concert devoted to Baroque polyphony, as well as undertaking a tour to Salzburg, China and throughout France as Associate Conductor. In 2013-14 Agnew made conducting debuts with the Ópera de Paris and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. He continues his presentation of the complete cycle of Monteverdi madrigals with Les Arts Florissants, a project which will see him conduct nearly 100 concerts by 2015.

Le Jardin des Voix is co-produced by the théâtre de Caen and Les Arts Florissants.

Les Fêtes vénitiennes are supported by The Selz Foundation.

The Festival Dans les Jardins de William Christie is organized by the Conseil départemental de la Vendée and Les Arts Florissants, in partnership with Les Jardins de Musique de William Christie.

The American Friends of Les Arts Florissants support the international and North American activities of Les Arts Florissants.

Les Arts Florissants are supported by the French Ministry of Culture. IMERYS and ALSTOM are Sponsors of Les Arts Florissants.